New York is a city full of American dreams. Hundreds of years ago, a large number of Italians, Irish and other ethnic groups came here across the Atlantic to find a new life and a new dream, New York.
In this city, there are various strange stories happening every day. The sea pianist who has never set foot on land in his life, the white-collar women who shuttles in the city of sexual desire, and the humorous middle-class intellectuals chasing young girls. Woody Allen, La Motta who fought enthusiastically in Mandison Garden, or the son of Sam who murdered wantonly in Queens in the 1970s, etc.
The "Taxi Driver" and "Shuttle Between Yin and Yang", which we are going to discuss together today, naturally took place in this magical metropolis of New York.
I won’t introduce the former as a teaching film, but I’d like to give a brief introduction to the latter, Bringing Out the Dead. This 1999 film is also from the work of Italian director Martin Sekosis. The film is based on Joe Connelly's novel. It is starring Nicolas Cage, the actor I admire and love most.
The film about the story is about: Cage played an ambulance on the streets of New York at night, but he lost his first aid target, a teenage girl, because of a mistake. After losing his life, he could not concentrate on his work at all, and none of the patients he encountered were rescued. In a rescue, he accidentally met the daughter of the patient he rescued. In New York, under the dark night, he gradually fell in love with the daughter of the patient, and his life has also undergone a huge change.
The description of "Taxi Driver" is actually not friendly to New York. From the driver's eyes, we can see the flashing neon lights, the fog from the heating pipes, and the dark side behind the fog hidden under the neon lights...Prostitutes , Drug dealers, rapists, and all the walking dead, under the shelter of the night, are building the so-called group lifestyle and the world in the poor district of New York. And as the protagonist said; let the rain wash this dirty world and wash these souls.
"Shuttle between Yin and Yang" and "Taxi Driver" are completely coincident in this point, or the film reflects more extreme, if the taxi driver is just relying on wandering on the street and picking up guests to observe this In the world, then midnight first responders not only drove ambulances around New York City, but also entered their homes, their lives, the homes of illegal immigrants, the buildings where drug dealers and prostitutes lived, the gathering places of homeless people... …
Both the above two films portray the poor district of New York as a world full of violence, drugs, and prostitution. Most of the streets are filled with hopeless and sick people. The damp streets give people an irresistible and uncomfortable feeling of dampness. It also implies to some extent and meaning the protagonist's aversion to the surrounding environment (or the world) and the desire to wash away the dirty world he is in.
Let us focus on the protagonists of the two films. Robert de Niro plays a demobilized veteran who has experienced the Vietnam War. From a personal point of view, he is a war-wounded veteran. His mental weakness caused He can't sleep many times (it reminds me that the X-Files is about one episode of Season 2, where several veterans who have experienced the Vietnam War have not slept for decades because of certain drugs), and at the same time The trauma of the war also caused certain defects in his personality. Most of the time he was immersed in his own world, but he rarely communicated with other people. It is especially obvious that he always communicated with the opposite sex. Evaluate a person’s life and the people around him with our own subjective judgments. Although the care for Judy Foster is kind, we cannot evaluate and judge whether she truly desires and wants for her. life. Generally speaking, he is quite a neurotic man.
And Nicholas Cage's midnight first responder is very similar to this taxi driver. After experiencing that accident, he also caused a huge trauma in his heart, and even lost himself. Thinking about life in the ambulance he was driving, he was completely numb when he was accustomed to life and death in the hell-like community hospital. However, all these feelings piled up in my heart infinitely, until consciously or unconsciously, he was like a race car driver when driving at midnight, and like a hysterical lunatic at other times.
We can find that the two films have surprising similarities in the setting of the characters. If the ending of "Taxi Driver" is that Robert De Niro has to some extent freed from the trauma and shadow of the war. , Then we will find that in fact the general trend of the two film stories is parallel, both find their own new life after a period of pain and some strange colors. Even the opening shots of the two films are extremely similar!
In the background music of "Taxi Driver", jazz occupies a huge proportion, especially the song by Bennard Herman that fills most of the film. I remember that in Coppola's film "Talk", where the story also took place in New York, it can be said that 100% jazz is used as the soundtrack. In fact, everyone knows that jazz can be regarded as a symbol of New York to a certain extent (although the origin of jazz music is in New Orleans). Many film and television works that take place in New York will use jazz as the soundtrack. Jazz is particularly in line with New York in terms of feeling. This kind of urban temperament, anyway, I have never seen any film and television works that took place in the hot Los Angeles and are filled with a lot of jazz as the soundtrack. In the film "Shuttle between Yin and Yang", the old naughty boy Martin changed his style. He used a lot of rock music as the soundtrack, such as the songs of the old rock bands such as The Who, REM and The Crash, which have nothing to do with the urban temperament ( Some are British bands), but to match the rhythm of the film. Relatively speaking, the film rhythm of the latter is much faster than the former. If jazz is used again, it is still not suitable.
If you look at it in chronological order, "Shuttle Between Yin and Yang" is easy to be labeled as "Martin Fried Rice", but I don't think so. First of all, in my opinion, "Taxi Driver" is a bit extreme in the protagonist's shaping. The protagonist feels like the kind of weird person who is difficult to approach and is mentally unsound (there is also a relationship with a lower education level). In terms of performance techniques, it also seems a bit obscure. The plot of "Taxi Driver" is not a kind of very affinity story. It needs the audience to think and watch carefully to understand, and people who can’t understand "Taxi Driver" There are many people. On the surface, it is relatively simple, it is not even a complete story, for the general public.
The latter's performance is not as obscure as the former. Of course, it does not mean that the audience does not need to think about it when watching the film. From the perspective of my understanding, although the story of "Shuttle Between Yin and Yang" is easier to read than the former, Martin's focus is not on this, but on the inner state of the characters. Martin's focus on this film is to create a character mentality, so that the audience can be immersed in the story and have the same feelings as the protagonist. This "Taxi Driver" is not a way at all. "Guessing the Train" has some similarities with "Shuttle Between Yin and Yang" in some ways.
In any case, there is no so-called superiority or inferiority between the former and the latter. Although there are similarities in many places, the overall effect and expression of ideas are still different. At the same time, whether it can resonate with the audience is also very important. Perhaps the status of "Taxi Driver" cannot be shaken in the history of movies. I like the latter better than the former.
New York, New York, a city that never dormant, bad weather all staged various stories,
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